A simplified version of my schema looks like this:

Events

Bookings

Participants

• participant_id
• booking_id

Users

Users are booked onto events via participant records, which belong to booking records, which are children of event records.

I am trying to write a method on the Event model to return all the users on the event, as an Eloquent relationship. I want it as Eloquent so I can chain where clauses etc., to further filter the resultset.

I have a participants() method on the Event model, that looks like this:

public function participants(): \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Relations\HasManyThrough
{
    return $this->hasManyThrough(
        Participant::class,
        Booking::class,
        'event_id',
        'booking_id',
        'participant_id',
        'booking_id'
    );
}

This works, and returns a HasManyThrough that I can traverse, or work with further.

My problem is in trying to create a users() method, without starting a new query builder.
I want to chain something to the participants() method, to get the User attached to each participant, and return this collection as an Eloquent relationship.

I realise I can do the following, but I end up with a simple array of objects this way, rather than a queryable Eloquent relationship. Which means I’ve lost the ORM functionality I want.

public function users()
{
    $users = [];
    foreach($this->participants as $participant){
        $users[] = $participant->user;
    }
    return $users;
}

How would I go about turning my participants collection into users? Is it possible to build Eloquent relationships (or collections) ‘by hand’?